Ritualized child abuse

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See also Child sacrifice, and Infanticide

Ritualized child abuse is a form of ritual aggression meant to disable, sexually abuse, bind or kill children or adolescents.

Contents

[edit] Ancient world

Main article: Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures

Archaeology has uncovered physical evidence of child sacrifice, the ritualistic killing of children in order to please supernatural beings, at several locations.[1] Some of the best attested examples are the diverse rites which were part of the religious practices in Mesoamerica and the Inca Empire.[2][3][4] Alice Miller, Lloyd deMause, psychologist Robert Godwin and other advocates of children's rights have written about pre-Columbian sacrifice within the framework of child abuse.[5][6][7]

Plutarch (ca. 46–120 AD) mentions the practice of the Carthaginian ritual burning of small children, as do Tertullian, Orosius, Diodorus Siculus and Philo. Livy and Polybius do not. The Hebrew Bible also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet ("roasting place") by the Caananites, and by some Israelites.[8]

Throwing children to the sharks was performed in ancient Hawaii.[9]

[edit] Other ritual actions

Sacrificial victims were often infants. "The slaughtering of newborn babies may be considered a common event in many cultures" including "the Eskimos, the Polynesians, the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Scandinavians, the Africans, the American Indians" and up to recent times "the Australian aboriginals".[10]

Artificial deformation of the skull predate written history and date back to Neanderthal times. It usually began just after birth for the next couple of years until the desired shape has been reached. It may have played a key role in Egyptian and Mayan societies.[11]

In China some boys were castrated. Both penis and scrotum were cut.[12] Other ritual actions have been described by anthropologists. Géza Róheim wrote about initiation rituals performed by Australian natives in which adolescent initiates were forced to drink blood.[13] Ritual rapes, in which young virgins are raped, have been part of shamanistic practices.[14]

[edit] Persistence of the practices

In some tribes rituals of Papua New Guinea, an elder "picks out a sharp stick of cane and sticks it deep inside the boy's nostrils until he bleeds profusely into the stream of a pool, an act greeted by loud war cries."[15] Afterwards, when boys are initiated into puberty and manhood, they are expected to perform fellatio to the elders. "Not all initiates will participate in this ceremonial homosexual activity, but in about five days later several will have to perform fellatio several times."[15]

Ritualistic abuse may also involve children accused, and beaten, for being purported witches in some Central African areas, for example a young niece may be blamed for the illness of a relative.[16] Female genital cutting has also been practiced in ritualized contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa; in some regions of the Middle East, and in Southeast Asia.

[edit] Psychological explanations

Main article: Psychohistorical views on infanticide

A minority of academics subscribe to a school of thought named psychohistory. They attribute the abusive rituals to the psychopathological projection of the perpetrators, especially of the parents.[5][6]

This "psychohistorical" model makes several claims: that childrearing in tribal societies included child sacrifice or high infanticide rates, incest, body mutilation, child rape and tortures, and that such activities were culturally acceptable.[17][18]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Milner, Larry S. (2000). Hardness of Heart / Hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide. University Press of America. 
  2. ^ Reinhard, Johan; Maria Stenzel (November 1999). "A 6,700 metros niños incas sacrificados quedaron congelados en el tiempo". National Geographic: 36–55. 
  3. ^ Discovery Channel The mystery of Inca child sacrifice
  4. ^ de Sahagún, Bernardino (1950-1982). Florentine Codex: History of the Things of New Spain, 12 books and 2 introductory volumes. Utah: University of Utah Press, translated and edited by Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble. 
  5. ^ a b deMause, Lloyd (2002). The Emotional Life of Nations. NY, London: Karnak. 
  6. ^ a b Godwin, Robert W. (2004). One cosmos under God. Minnesota: Paragon House. 
  7. ^ Miller, Alice (1991). Breaking down the walls of silence. NY: Dutton/Penguin Books, 91. 
  8. ^ Brown, Shelby (1991). Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrificial Monuments in their Mediterranean Context. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. 
  9. ^ Davies, Nigel (1981). Human Sacrifice in History and Today. NY: William Morrow & Co., 192. 
  10. ^ Grotstein, James S. (2000). Who is the dreamer who dreams the dream?. NJ: The Analytic Press, Relational Perspectives Book Series Volume 19 edition, 247, 242. 
  11. ^ Rousselle, Aline (1983). Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 54. 
  12. ^ Tompkins, Peter (1963). The Eunuch and the Virgin: A Study of Curious Customs. NY: Bramhall House, 12. 
  13. ^ Róheim, Géza (1950). Psychoanalysis and Anthropology. NY: International Universities Press, 76. 
  14. ^ Nevill, Drury (1989). The Elements of Shamanism. Longmead: Element, 20. 
  15. ^ a b Herdt, Gilbert (2005). The Sambia: Ritual, Sexuality, and Change in Papua New Guinea (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology). Longmead: Wadsworth Publishing; 2 edition. 
  16. ^ Reforma (19 November 2007). "Vejan en África a 'niños brujos'". Press release.
  17. ^ deMause, Lloyd (January 1982). Foundations of Psychohistory. Creative Roots Publishing, 132-146. ISBN 094050801X. 
  18. ^ Rascovsky, A. (1995). Filicide: The Murder, Humiliation, Mutilation, Denigration and Abandonment of Children by Parents. NJ: Aronson, 107.